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- Volume 27, Issue 53, 2016
Public - Volume 27, Issue 53, 2016
Volume 27, Issue 53, 2016
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Mega-event cities: Art/audiences/aftermaths
Authors: Peter Dickinson, Kirsty Johnston and Keren ZaiontzAbstractThis special issue introduction contextualizes the role of arts and culture in articulating the social agendas of urban mega-events like Olympic Games and World Expos, and also individual contributors’ approaches to this topic.
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Hosts and guests
By Lorna BrownAbstract‘Hosts and guests’traces public artworks produced by Other Sights for Artists’ Projects across the arc of the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games, the subsequent anniversary of the City and the current context of reduced public resources. The article comments on the changing aesthetic, economic and regulatory conditions of public spaces and public life through a discussion of four projects: The Games are Open by Köbberling and Kaltwasser; Deadhead by the Bomfords, Digital Natives and A Monument to Mysterious Fires.
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The illusion of inclusion: Agenda 21 and the commodification of Aboriginal culture in the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games
More LessAbstractThis article investigates the discourse about Aboriginal people benefitting from the 2010 Olympic Games and argues there was nothing fundamentally new about Aboriginal involvement in Vancouver, except for an unprecedented mobilization of Aboriginal bodies, land and insignia. In this regard, Aboriginal inclusion in 2010 was definitely different from past Games. There were more Aboriginal performers, artists and volunteers, more cultural imagery in strategic locations, and more indigenous merchandise for sale than ever before. Yet, in spite of their increased visibility, the power relations sustaining historic inequities between Olympic organizers and Aboriginal people remained largely unchanged. Indeed, a closer look at how Aboriginal people were involved in the Vancouver Games, the promises made to them, and the legacies that actually materialized, suggests the present day arrangement for Aboriginal people within the Olympic industry has actually worsened.
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‘You just censored two native artists’: Art as antidote, resisting the Vancouver Olympics
More LessAbstractThis article theorizes resistance in the context of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. Drawing on the work of Powhatan-Renapé and Lenape scholar Jack Forbes, this article situates anti-Olympic resistance within the context of struggles against what Forbes refers to as ‘wétiko psychosis’. As a kind of psycho-social illness, wétiko psychosis speaks to the pervasive capitalism at work within the Olympic machine and Indigenous relationships to capitalism and the Games. In turn, it then considers the role of art, in particular the image of the thunderbird created by Kwakwakwa’kw artist and activist Gord Hill and TsuuT’ina/Nak’azdli artist and activist Riel Manywounds, in the landscape of anti-Olympic resistance. This article argues that the thunderbird stands is both an antidote and vaccination for the kinds of consumptive sickness contemporary Olympics are plagued with. Lastly, I discuss how the thunderbird’s visual presence in the Olympic archive further reinforces its power.
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Olympian performance: The cultural economics of the opening ceremony of London 2012
More LessAbstractThe 2012 Olympic Games in London opened with a ceremony staged by theatre and cinema director, Danny Boyle. Its set-piece show, Isles of Wonder, was performed by a professional and community cast in the newlybuilt Olympic Stadium in the city’s east end. This article considers Isles of Wonder as both a theatrical and economic event that staged two models of political economy simultaneously: a theatrically Keynesian one and an infrastructurallyrentier one. It argues that the discomfiting pleasure of Isles of Wonderresulted, in large measure, from the spectatorial experience of watching this interplay happen.
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Media archaeologies of the Olympic city
More LessAbstractOlympic moving images – and their associated large and small screen manifestations in the city – take place. Yet, how is this taking and making of place through screen media and their techo-assemblages understood? Despite histories of the Olympic Games that discuss the mega-event as an urban and global growth engine and as a hotbed of cultural and technological innovation, the cities themselves as media and mediating technologies can appear to slip away under grand narratives of progress and ideology. Approaching the Olympic city as a screen landscape, this article asks how the myriad screens that produce the Olympic Games might be approached in ways that generate new understandings of the agential and performative role of the screen in contemporary urban environments. Using methods borrowed from contemporary archaeology, I consider how newer methods of engaging with Olympic screen assemblages may be necessary and how these methods might have an impact more broadly on the study of screen media.
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Inelastic Olympic hopefuls: Rhythmic mis-interpellation in three auditions for the London 2012 ceremonies
More LessAbstractBetween 2011 and 2012, I participated in three auditions for the London Olympic and Paralympic opening and closing ceremonies. Unable to execute the choreographic commands of West End dance captains – those charged with selecting UK residents and citizens for the ceremonies – I found myself out of step with the other Olympic hopefuls on the dance floor. What does my acute lack of rhythm reveal about the necessity for synchrony in national performances? The Olympic Games is a celebration of national belonging on a global stage that unfolds through corporeal solidarity. As my body foreclosed upon the possibility of coordination, it took on a physical inelasticity closer to that of the ‘mechanical inelasticity’ Henri Bergson’s uses to describe the pratfalls in slapstick comedies. I frame my failures on the dance floor as rhythmic mis-interpellation, which is my way of describing how my body’s involuntary refusal of technique cancelled me out without anyone ever having to usher me offstage.
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A battle for a brave new world
By Jenny SealeyAbstractIn this reflective article and provocative play, the author draws first on her experience as Co-Artistic Director of the London 2012 Paralympic Opening Ceremony. She charts the challenges, opportunities and optimism that shaped the lead-up to the event. She also highlights key aspects of the Ceremony’s personal, artistic and political successes. These moments serve as sharp contrast, however, to the shock experienced by many disabled UK citizens in response to the government cuts to the Access to Work and Independent Living Fund that followed the Games. To share the impact of these cuts on disabled people’s lives, the articlechanges tack to include the script for a new piece of verbatim theatre, Sorry. The play assembles responses to the author’s call out to the Disability Arts community asking for stories about the cuts or their lives as artists. It has been performed in various universities, colleges, arts establishments and political platforms.
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‘Public Art as Collective Practice’: ‘Collective Breath Poster’
Authors: Neville Gabie and Keren ZaiontzAbstractUK-based artist Neville Gabie discusses the turns his art practice has taken since his Olympic Park residency in the lead up to the 2012 London Summer Games. Gabie reflects on his counter-Olympic initiative, The Greatest Possible Distance (2012) as well as his more recent residency at the Cabot Institute, which led to a series of formally experimental works entitled, Experiments in Black and White (2012–2013). This series served as the impetus for Gabie’s ephemeral, socially engaged work, Collective Breath. A poster that documents the Collective Breath project is printed in Part 4: ‘Suspending Freedom, Sustaining Spectacle’ of this special issue.
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‘The aesthetics of austerity’
Authors: Liz Crow and Keren ZaiontzAbstractUK-based art-activist Liz Crow discusses the challenges of making socially engaged, political art and performance in a climate of austerity. She reflects on the euphoric moment of the 2012 Paralympics Games, and the contradictory experiences that resulted for people with disabilities who were simultaneously lauded as ‘superhumans’ and castigated as ‘scroungers’. Crow talks about the dialogic works she created to counter these unattainable – and implicitly discriminatory – categories including two durational works, Bedding Out (2012–2013) and Figures (2015). Figures, a mass sculptural durational performance, testifies to the far-reaching effects of austerity measures and also holds the potential of serving as an alternative ‘legacy’ archive of the London Summer Games. A foldout of selected images and text from the Figures project is printed in Part 4: ‘Suspending Freedom, Sustaining Spectacle’ of this special issue.
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Calgary (1988): A cultural Olympiad avant la lettre
More LessAbstractBennett’s article reviews the Olympic Arts Festival at the 1988 Winter Olympic Games held in Calgary. She examines the importance of this event to the aspirations of a modestly sized prairie city and its implications for local artists. An exhibition at the city’s GlenbowMuseum, ‘The Spirit Sings’, serves as an important case study for considering the social, cultural and political rights of First Nations in Canada and provides key questions for challenging ideas of ‘legacy’ and ‘impact’ in the context of mega-event production.
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Olympic homonationalisms
More LessAbstractThis photo essay examines modern queer politics and anti-colonial resistance in the Olympic cities of Vancouver, Sochi, London and Rio de Janeiro. Photos of advocacy and protests illustrate different forms of homonationalism gay and lesbian in each host city. These are juxtaposed with photos of indigenous, anti-colonial protests against the Olympics.
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All that Glitters: Sport, BP, and Repression in Azerbaijan (‘The great coming out Party of Azerbaijan’ and ‘What the marriage has created’)
Authors: Emma Hughes and James MarriottAbstractAll that Glitters was first published by Platform to mark the Opening Ceremony of the 2015 European Games in Baku. The inaugural European Games was about much more than medals. Held in Azerbaijan at the height of a systematic crackdown on human rights and democracy, the Games were the first of a series of international sporting events the country hosted. This reprint of excerpts from All That Glitters explores how the Games belonged to Azerbaijan’s Aliyev regime and the British oil company BP and how sport was co-opted in the service of a dynasty and fossil fuels. A sequel to Platform’s The Oil Road, this publication returns readers to Azerbaijan’s capital, where a new generation of lawyers, journalists, politicians and activists struggles for its country’s freedom. All That Glitters unpicks the heady mix of sport, repression and hydrocarbons that is blinding the world to the grim reality behind the showcase of Baku.
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States of no exception: Expo 2015 in Milano
Authors: Sabine Bitter, Jeff Derksen and Helmut WeberAbstractThis photo-essay examines Expo 2015 in Milan, Italy in relation to the architectural, urban and political histories of world’s fairs and other mega-events. Beginning with the rejected masterplan by architects Herzog & de Meuron and Stefano Boeri, Expo 2015 aimed to reposition the role of the nation state architecturally and culturally. While individual national pavilions took up the traditional role of asserting their position within the world system, Expo 2015 made no cohesive argument for a future made better through capitalist development despite the theme of ‘Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life’. While presenting capitalism as a globally encompassing system to which there is no outside, Expo 2015 also recreated the uneven development within globalization and asserted a north–south developmental divide. Expo 2015 as an urban development engine within the city-region of Milan is also examined.
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‘Figures (2015) – mass sculptural durational performance’
By Liz CrowAbstractUK-based art-activist Liz Crow discusses the challenges of making socially engaged, political art and performance in a climate of austerity. She reflects on the euphoric moment of the 2012 Paralympics Games, and the contradictory experiences that resulted for people with disabilities who were simultaneously lauded as ‘superhumans’ and castigated as ‘scroungers’. Crow talks about the dialogic works she created to counter these unattainable – and implicitly discriminatory – categories including two durational works, Bedding Out (2012–2013) and Figures (2015). Figures, a mass sculptural durational performance, testifies to the far-reaching effects of austerity measures and also holds the potential of serving as an alternative ‘legacy’ archive of the London Summer Games. A foldout of selected images and text from the Figures project is printed in Part 4: ‘Suspending Freedom, Sustaining Spectacle’ of this special issue.
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Breaking and Entering: The Contemporary House Cut, Spliced, and Haunted
More LessAbstractA review of Breaking and Entering: The Contemporary House Cut, Spliced, and Haunted that examines the interdisciplinary slippages and subtle tensions drawn across the theme of house and home by this collection of academic authors. This review outlines the key chapter ideas and highlights themes that arise across multiple texts.
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NIGHTSENSE
Authors: Jennifer Fisher and Jim Drobnick
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